1. Change in glacier area and thickness in the Tomur Peak, western Chinese Tien Shan over the past four decades.
- Author
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Baojuan, Huai, Zhongqin, Li, Meiping, Sun, Wenbin, Wang, Shang, Jin, and Kaiming, Li
- Subjects
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GLACIERS , *SURFACE area , *TOPOGRAPHIC maps , *LANDSAT satellites , *ALTITUDES - Abstract
This paper looks at glacier area change in the Tomur Peak for the 1964/71-2000 and 2000-2011 periods. The results show that the total area of the selected 78 glaciers has decreased from 555.45 km in 1964/71 to 530.39 km in 2000, and further reduced to 521.89 km in 2011. Overall, the selected glaciers have lost 4.50% of their surface area between 1964/71 and 2000, and have lost 1.60% more between 2000 and 2011. The area reduction rate of the 78 glaciers increased from 0.12%/a during 1964/71-2000 to 0.13%/a during 2000-2011. In addition, this paper describes a method for estimating the ice surface elevation change using the SRTM (2000) and elevation data generated from topographic maps (1964/71) to quantify the ice thickness change for the 1964/71-2000 period. The surface elevation for about 73.50% of grid area decreased, mostly in the glacier ablation zone. The overall average thickness loss is 22.35 m which yields an annual loss of 0.60 m/a. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
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